Senior Engineer - Surface Chemist

About Our Group

At Seagate our mission is to build the world’s best data storage devices. The Advanced Transducer Development group is a global R&D organization that develops new recording head technologies to advance areal density and enable Seagate’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) 4 year+ product roadmap. Our process team uses state-of-the-art wafer fabrication tools and cleanroom facilities to innovate and deliver leading-edge writers and read sensors.

With an emphasis on proving feasibility of new devices, processes and materials, we help build Seagate’s future time-to-market leadership. If you are excited by innovative technology development, are naturally creative, and passionate about seeing ideas come to life then this could be a perfect fit to your research and development career.

At Seagate our mission is to build the world’s best data storage devices. The Advanced Transducer Development group is a global R&D organization that develops new recording head technologies to advance areal density and enable Seagate’s HDD (Hard Disk Drive) 4 year+ product roadmap. Our process team uses state-of-the-art wafer fabrication tools and cleanroom facilities to innovate and deliver leading-edge writers and read sensors.

With an emphasis on proving feasibility of new devices, processes and materials, we help build Seagate’s future time-to-market leadership. If you are excited by innovative technology development, are naturally creative, and passionate about seeing ideas come to life then this could be a perfect fit to your research and development career.

• Develop novel, robust, and manufacturable chemical processing methods to integrate novel metal and dielectric thin film structures into nanometer-scale head devices
• Investigate wet etch, surface preparation, and interface chemical processing techniques to engineer robust metal-dielectric interfaces and ensure stable and predictable operation of new materials under device operating conditions
• Perform chemical, materials, and surface characterization to understand reaction mechanisms, adhesion behavior, device compatibility, and performance
• Collaborate with unit process owners (lithography, deposition, etch, wet process, metrology) to achieve prototype device wafer build flows capable of meeting design intent
• Help assess the impact of new chemical processes on downstream head performance
• Partner with wafer capital equipment suppliers to define hardware paths needed for novel chemical processing and surface characterization capability and manufacturability
• Participate in technology transfers to the product development engineering team
• Contribute to Seagate’s IP portfolio in the form of invention disclosures, patents, trade secrets, peer-reviewed journal articles, and/or white papers

• You are self-motivated, intellectually curious, able to work independently and have a strong attention to detail
• You are an honest and respectful team player, capable of working in strong partnership with a diverse global group of engineers and technicians
• You are a well-organized multitasker, able to balance day-to-day wafer processing needs with longer-term development work
• You maintain thorough documentation of results and can clearly present and discuss them with other staff members in engineering and management forums
• You have a track record of innovation and regularly use outside sources (journals, patents, university projects and conferences) to inspire new ideas and directions
• You are able and eager to work in a mix of clean room and laboratory environments

• Strong hands-on experience and in-depth understanding of surface and interface science, including wet-etching, corrosion, and surface modification, such as controlled hydrophobicity, activation, oxidation, materials compatibility, etc.
• Expertise in thin film, surface, interface, and chemical characterization techniques (e.g. AFM, XPS, contact angle, IR-spectroscopy, SEM, (S)
  TEM, TDTR, ICPMS etc)
• Familiarity with nanoscale device fabrication, associated wafer process and measurement systems, as well as platforms to model, simulate, or visualize formed devices…